Be Boring

From the outside looking in at the mentors and figures I look up to, I've come to terms with the lack of "excitement," "fun," and "exciting" events.

My mentors rarely "do fun things." They stick to doing the boring fundamentals that will create the life they desire tomorrow. Like daily workouts that are used to consistently stick to and push to the next level. Jocko still does it, with or without coffee or excitement. Or if it's the writing that has to be put down to finish that book, Tim Ferriss still sits his ass down to write. But why do we think of the illusion of excitement of success when it's the joy in the daily iterations that matters?

Reflecting on the year, I have noticed a pattern in myself: an increased patience and realization of the importance of doing the boring iterations with joy and purpose. Specifically, I've seen breakthrough fitness levels by treating my body like a machine. Yes - break it down with progressive increases in intensity, and fuel it up through careful inputs. Then continue the iterations until you've shed away the previous version that no longer supported my goals. Rinse and repeat.

For years, I've treated my body through varying experiments. Now that I've found the experiment that created optimal returns, you can be sure of me sticking to it.

I'm a born experimenter. But I can't experiment my way out of doing the boring iterations of the best experiment. All of my results stem from there.

Reflecting on the previous year, I clearly have a vision in my mind on how to get to the next level of the "game of life":

Here's the first iteration of my 2025 API:

I. Be boring and do boring

Being boring is a huge edge. You get peace, time, and freedom automatically back. I can then leverage this extra bandwidth to develop myself and dedicate myself to a craft. Then doing the boring (but exciting to me) iterations to build specific knowledge. Ultimately, you become very interesting and known in the ideas and questions scene because you have built a unique worldview, different from others because you were not distracted by "what was hot" or by "who did what." Mark Zuckerberg was a boring nerd until he built Facebook; then he became the cool nerd.

II. Be happy and angry

Be happy because you've got a roof over your head and food in your belly. Much of my own misery comes from forgetting to put things into perspective. Happiness is a choice I make and remake all day, every day. Accept iterations and find the smallest, most mundane things as reasons to express delight and practice happiness.

Anger is a different level on the energy scale. It's a powerful tool when used as a tool. When I'm not where I want to be or lack the energy to get there, I create a sense of controlled anger directed towards the voices limiting the higher sense. When I drift into habit type, I get angry to stir up the emotion to throw that habit away. It's not a rage type of anger, but an adrenaline type of silence that makes you hit that new personal record in the gym, finally overcoming that stupid fear of the 90 kg bench press. Create this anger when needed but never let anyone else feel or get burned.

III. Create boring businesses and boring value

Cool new ideas are great, and I love them. It's exciting to brainstorm and get to new depths of creativity. But much of the value capture goes not to the ideas but to a boring plan with brilliant execution.

Looking at the Nvidia evolution going from a "boring" tech development company to a frontier AI beast through 20 years of slow existence: From producing GPU chips to essentially creating the building blocks for BioAI and ChatGPT. It's wild to see their value capture well deserved considering their 20 years of slow rise. The lesson is to clearly see and find where I can create value by doing boring work. If we consider our options, sometimes boring is parallel to higher value capture.

Play well in 2025.